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Topic: Setting up Core – MDs. (Read 6824 times)

I had an interesting experience so far setting up my Core / MD units. My Core has been up and running for about a week now, with no major problems. One of my Win 7 machines keeps loosing its IP, but I think that that is isolated to that one as all of my other PCs and Macs are doing OK.

For the last several days I have been trying to set up a second LinuxMCE machine, on a Zatac 330 platform. I could not install 7.10 successfully, but was able to install 8.10 on it before, when I first started playing with MCE. This time however, I could not get the 8.10 to go through the process of updating itself to MCE no matter what I did. I tried reinstalling the OS from CD several times, and then going through the steps of upgrading, only to get the same errors that some of the components could not be downloaded, and the update process would constantly hang. That is until I tried one thing.

I took out the Core out of the loop completely, and connected the new PC directly to the cable modem. It installed and upgraded in one easy step… I am not sure why, but it seems that the Core “running” my network was somehow interfering with the new PC’s download process… If anyone has other thoughts, please – I would love to hear them, as I have one more Zotac based PC that I will set up. If I do not have to take out the Core, at least for the original OS install, that would be nice.

My second question is – do I need to disable the Core function on the new Zotac PC that will act as an MD only? It has one NIC. I saw that there is an option on my 7.10 to disable the Core and leave the MD to load at startup.

Sorry for the long history, but I thought it was interesting to me, and maybe can help someone else.

yep i think you may be confused here as to how an MD works. it does not have anything installed to it, in fact it does not even need a hard drive. turn it on and set it to boot from network. answer the questions. done.

Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?

Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?

1. You will have only 1 Core fully installed with LinuxMCE as per the wiki, the others will install from the Core over the LAN2. Your Core will have two (2) Network LAN Cards, in your case 1 on the motherboard and another usually in a PCI slot3. 1 NIC, network interface card, becomes the external LAN, connected to your broadband modem or WIRED port of a router and the other becomes the LinuxMCE internal LAN usually connected to a switch (or a router with the DHCP server functions turned off - the Core needs to supply the IP to the MDs and, if any, Mobile Orbiters)4. Connect your Diskless (No hard Drive) computers that are to be "Diskless Media Directors" to the Core's internal LAN switch, one at a time initially, so that the Core can recognize them and build a Media Director image (on the core) for them.--- Picture the Image of a Media Director as a drive that the Media Director's computer would boot from when turned on except, it resides on the Core and boots the MD over the Core's Internal LAN ---5. If you are using LinuxMCE 8.10-Alpha2-Latest, and you should, the video in your Zotac should be recognized and at least get you an output from the VGA connector. I would recommend connecting to a VGA monitor at first and then fine tune the output of your HDMI connector using the AV/Wizard after everything is set up and you are familiar with setting up your first Media Director.

Note: I use a wireless router with the DHCP server functions turned off for my Internal LAN so that my Media Directors can be hardwired over CAT5e and my WebDT 366 Orbiter can communicate through the wireless portion, with WEP Key encryption for security.

Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?

You need to have LinuxMCE-0810 installed on your Core for the newer hardware like the Zotac's or Revo's to PXE boot and deliver MD capability. We have an alternative approach but it involves purchasing a Core with Cascade installed (Cascade is my companies commercial variant of LinuxMCE). See the the url to a thread discussing this in the footer of this message if you'd like to explore this option.

I have set up an 8.10 on an AMD PC with an A8N-E board, and a second (PCI-based) NIC. I used the 8.10 because I do want the Zotacs to be functional.

DHCP "seems" to be working as I have leases to my other PCs in the house. However, the Core does not seem to "see" one of the PCs that is running unRaid. I have set up a static IP on the unRaid and am able to connect to it through the other PCs, just not the Core. When I set up 7.10 on the same AMD PC, the unRaid was quickly detected and added appropriately, so that I could browse it's contents from the Core.

OK. I set my unRaid box to obtain IP via DHCP and it did. It shows up under the DHCP client list with a valid MAC and an IP. However, I still do not see the wizard that lets me add the unRaid to the LinuxMCE.

In the past, when I added any additional computers to my network, LinuxMCE Core would ask me if I wanted to use that PC for storage, and... This time - nothing!!! What am I doing wrong???

...

Well, after doing some research, I figured a way to manually add shares, and so far it seems to be working. It seems that the "cataloguing" of video files takes a long time... But, at least, they are coming through...

So,... I am trying to do PXE boot, and the new MD keeps rebooting about 15 seconds into the initial boot-up. I have read here that a common issue was having two NICs and disabling one solves the problem. My Zotac 330 ion board only has one NIC! I do have an integrated 802.11g card. I'll try disabling that. Has anyone with this board had similar issues and been able to solve it? I keep getting stuck at what appears to be step 10.xxxxxx

A number of us are having this issue with the current build. I haven't heard of or found any workarounds yet, so we may be waiting a bit until someone is able to look at it. Unless anyone else has an answer? I am also stuck at this point.

I have setup my Core and "MD" with both 810 and, being a novice at this, it seems to me that the second PC, which is supposed to be MD and only has one NIC, is trying to play the part of the Core. In 710, during the initial bootup, I remember that there is an option to disable the "Core" and just let it boot up as an MD. Is there a similar feature in 810, that would let the second PC boot up as a "slave MD"?

Also, a little different question: Where can I adjust the scaling of video? On a PC I know that I can go into my video card's setup and scale down the video to fit my projector screen. Here, I am not sure where to look.